Envoi: Sean Michael McClure, Racist and Homophobe

I received this e-mail a few days ago from Sean Michael McClure, who sometimes posted to this blog. I have cut and pasted the text in its pristine form. I felt editing out the spelling and punctuation errors would lessen the impact.

From: Sean McClure

To: "T. S. Hattar"

Subject: RE: Stop harrasing me

Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2009 00:09:04 +0000

Dear Talal;

In the end I am quite pleased that your have a disease that is turning your mind to hummus. Nothing pleases me more than to know that as a gay man you will never have children. So even if before your mind turns to rot God has deprived you with any posibility of a legacy, since we all know that your poli sci views, being a Marxist as you are, is antiquated and irrelevant in today's day in age.

I hope the flames of hell lap at your peasent toes for eternity, which will happen since you, as a gay man are an abonimation before God. Which sadly for you would have happened anyway since you will always be a Saracen dog.

I only wish that I could report your family members to my overzealous DHS thuggy friends, for being terrorists, I do so enjoy putting Arabs up on the chopping plot. But, since you are disowned, their suffering really wouldn't hurt you so I wouldn't enjoy it all that much and when I got rid of that nasty old Paki professor who dared to give me a B, well the titilation only lasted so long.

Cheers;
Sean Michael McClure

Background:

Near the start of the last term, Sean was whining to me that he didn’t have any gaming buddies anymore. He wanted to get me and a group of my friends to play a game with him. I told him I didn’t have the time for gaming and it would be rough to find a game that we could all play, because my buddies live in different time zones. To his credit, Sean found a game called Legends of Elveron, that can be played realistically across time zones with players checking in at different time of days, but still coordinating their actions across timezones. So I got Kirk and Simon to join in our original group. Nelly joined at the start of our second round. A friend and ex-student, Josiah, hopped in for our third round. The game was fun. It was actually really fun. And it gave me a chance to catch up with old friends, especially Kirk.

The events that led to Sean's letter started at the tail end of our first round. We elected Sean our realm king (he clearly coveted the post). But he started bossing everyone around. The term primus inter pares didn’t seem to exist in his vocabulary. As he was pushing my friends around, whom I’d gathered primarily as a favor to him, I sent him a side e-mail advising him to cool it. He exploded in a fit of pique, quit our realm (teams in Elveron are called realms) and decided to play the game for a round separately. We left him alone. Since he was restarting the game after we had already “left protection”—the setup phase of the game, we could have hunted him and ruined his round. In the name of good sportsmanship, we left him alone. For this we were rewarded near the end of the round by several obsessive attacks by Sean. Sean built up a fairly strong defense and we weren’t able to hit him back. Needless to say, in gamers terms, we wanted revenge.

We got revenge near the end of the second round. He attacked us when he was vulnerable. We had changed our kingdom names, so he didn’t know it was us. He just thought he was bullying a random realm. We all came back and pounded him. Indeed, as a realm, Nelly, Simon, Kirk, Josiah and I collectively killed his kingdom. It’s not easy killing a kingdom in Elveron, but we did it. And we did it collectively as a realm. It was really great for esprit de corps. After the kill, Sean sent us this feeble protest message:

From: Sean McClure

To: "T. S. Hattar"

Subject: Stop harrasing me

Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:14:23 +0000

Talal;

I don't want to deal with you anymore as I am sure you have no interest in dealing with me. I found what you said shitty and condecending and I don't want to engage with you. Since i ma calling in the ghost with you, as I assume you want to do with me, then why the hell can't you leave me alone in the game.

Than you for runing the experience for me. Are you such a petty person that you feel compelled to keep coming after me? I don't want to interact with you. I accept an attack here or there, but you are constantly coming after me.

I would like to ask that you be civil and stop.

Thank you
Sean Michael McClure

This was my response:

From: "T. S. Hattar"

To: "Sean McClure"

Subject: Re: Stop harrasing me

Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:52:42 -0800

Dear Sean,

I think Kirk made our pack's position clear in his game message. We are satisfied with the outcome of this transaction and have no further need for interaction. If you are concerned that our word cannot be taken at face value, simply change your kingdom name. Indeed, like most strategic players, we change ours every round because camouflage is, simply put, good military practice.

In fact, we were all rather floored that you did not follow this sensible practice in the present round. But then, you could not have given us that "Batman villain" flavor that we savored so much for the past two rounds were you not insanely arrogant. Your gaming practice has added tremendously to the pleasure of our game. You gave us a personal enemy and, at length, you allowed us add, if you will, the spice of murder to our egg-nog. The hunt, particularly the end game, was deeply satisfying, for which I sincerely thank you. On the whole it's been a jolly good Christmas.

It's good to have friends!

Cheers!

Talal

I think it was pretty mild. He had been a real jerk in the game and, yes, I really did relish giving him his comeuppance. At any rate, I had never received such a vitriolic letter in my entire life. Indeed, while this was not the first instance of anti-Arab racism that has been directed against me (although most of these came on the playground on the seventh grade), it was the first homophobic slur I’ve received in my life. Well, I guess I had those in the seventh grade too, but no one, including me, knew that I was gay when they were calling me “faggot” back then.

I have recently learned something about prejudice. People interact with you, even pretend to be your friends, despite identities they consider to be undesirable. Prejudice doesn’t mean that they have a white sheet in their closet and plan on burning a cross in your yard. It means they pretend to be friends and consider it a “courtesy.” They think they’re being generous. It means when they’re pissed off and want to bludgeon you, they grab onto the identity and use it as cudgel. Racists and homophobes exist everywhere. Indeed, Sean Michael McClure is a government bureaucrat who first worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Africa Bureau and now works at the Department of the Treasury. They exist in your government.

In The Neverending Story, Michael Ende tells of the Old Man of Wandering who writes down the events of people’s lives so that they live forever as an ugly or beautiful story. I may not be the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, but this is definitely Sean Michael McClure’s ugly story. I hope for his sake it’s the only one.

Reflections on Porn and Sports

Next week is Week 8. The term is moving into final swing. This last part is going to be intense. I have to design lessons and readings for roughly ten hours on the Lebanese Civil War. They’re turning in their papers about nationalism in either England or France on Tuesday. I’ll be plugging and chugging the rest of the term. It’s going to be an uphill slog. Dinur will be visiting during Week 10, so it’ll all be pretty fuckin’ nutty.

So, Hattar, you say. What’s been going on? Here’s the all the latest:

Revelation to Twits Everywhere: The Internet Is for Porn

This has been my official position since my sophomore year of college, when I discovered the world of the Usenet. Dumbfucks in the college of education would talk about the importance of getting every child in America hooked up to the internet at school and I’d want to ask them, “So, basically, you really want to give ten year-olds access to gangbangs and hot, man-on-man sex?” But I knew they’d respond much like KateMonster in this video:

But Trekki says it all: “So grab your dick and double-click for PORN, PORN PORN!”

Ozzie Pitches a Shut-Out: Red Wings Smash Avs, 4-0

Yes, razz me all you want, Chris Osgood remains my favorite Detroit Red Wing of all time. Yes, he isn’t a god like Yzerman, or Shanny, or Lidstrom. But he lives for hockey, loves his teammates and is remains one of the cutest guys in the NHL. Yeah, he can be streaky, I admit it. But now and then, he does something truly magnificent, like end a six-game losing streak with a shut-out against the hated Colorado Avalanche. Of course, we’ve gone on to lose to the Flames 0-1 and tonight to the Canucks 1-4 (ouch…), but beating the Avs is still beating the Avs.

Some Loser Sharks Fan Posted to My Blog

I have several actual friends who are Sharks fans, so I don’t automatically label any Sharks fan a loser, even if they’re fans of the team with the gayest color scheme in the NHL. And I don’t mean “gay” in that really good, Seattle Quake Rugby player, hardcore man-on-man sex, I-love-queer-porn kind of a way. I just mean “gay” in that seventh-grade, “you’re a wimpy loser” kind of a way. I mean, teal? Who the fuck wears a teal jersey? I mean it could be pink, but still, teal is pretty bad. By the way, I’m actually gay and an actual Sharks fan had to tell me that the name of that wussy color. I’m a real, bona fide fag and I didn’t know that name of that loser color until Dinur launched into his hilarious defense of his jersey and its pathetic color, years and years ago, back before the flood.

Anyway, seriously—check it out! Here’s dumbfuck’s text:

haha redwings suck, 6 game losing streak! It shows that when your team's average age is like 37 you're going to get tired and injured eventually. Almost every year it comes just before the playoffs, just like now.

Now, you ask, how do I know that Loser’s a Sharks fan? Well, that itself has an interesting story. Because I get this weird-ass comment attached to a blog entry that’s nearly a year old, I naturally zip over to statcounter.com to try to see who might have posted, in case one of my friends is playing a prank on me. Well, it turns out, that I was having quite an active reader day. People from around the world, especially North America and Europe, were hitting my blog looking for a photo called “dinur and joe thornton.jpg”—yup, those exact words down to the “.jpg.” Here’s the photo:

The photo is Dinur’s, but I posted it last year. Now, I renamed the file when I posted it, because Dinur hadn’t and it had that “letters and numbers” filename that cameras give to files. Indeed, I made a google check and, sure enough, my blog is rated superhigh on google image searches for Joe Thornton. As individuals across the world are searching for the file by name, and the search is not “joe thornton shirtless,” I’m assuming that they’re all Sharks fans and not queer boys (or straight girls, for that matter) who like athletes. So, odds are, the Whiny, Toothless Loser is a Sharks fan. Will I deign to respond in words? Why bother? Let’s review an icon that symbolizes a fundamental reality that will remain written in stone for as long as that limp-dicked loser, Ron Wilson, remains coach of the San Jose Sharks. Indeed it’s this icon that set Loser Boy off in the first place:

That’s Pavel Datsyuk firing on the Sharks’ empty net in last year’s playoffs. No team coached by Ron Wilson will ever knock the Wings out of the Stanley Cup playoffs (Remember 1998? I know Sean does) or ever win an Olympic gold medal (I’ll never forget or forgive Nagano). ‘Nuff said?

Well, no, not really. Some wiseass out there will point out (possibly Kirk would say this in that rather understated and detached tone that he likes to employ whenever dropping an analytical bomb on the Green Bay Packers, a tone I doubt I could ever successfully mimic), “Well, certainly your anonymous poster with dubious capitalization is a bit of a loser for not signing his name. I’ll grant you that. Nonetheless, isn’t his analysis essentially correct? Isn’t all of this drama that you’re stirring up essentially a ruse to distract us from the fact that these older, more injury prone Wings are likely to have a spotty end of season record, what with their current injury profile? And isn’t stirring up all this drama just as gay as, well, a Sharks jersey?”

Well, I guess I have to come a little clean. I can’t say that I’m thinking that the Wings are going to be as spectacular as they have been all season through the course of the spring. They have to heal up. It’s true. But I ask you to remember two things:

First, would you want your team to endure the Curse of the President’s Trophy in the playoffs?

Virtually none of you lazy fucks at the age of twenty looked as hot and were in as good a shape as Chris Chelios is at 46. Hockey isn’t football. You critics can go fuck yourselves.

Will Sexy Rexy Return?

Long time readers of this blog (all four of you) may recall that I sometimes get irked that among the leading key terms that lead readers to my blog is the phrase “Rex Grossman shirtless.” The search, incidentally, leads to several pictures like these:

Rex apparently developed a taste for Captain Morgan in his frat boy drinking days. No shirtless pics and no wonder! I mean, you’d have to be a ditzy blonde bimbo like the one in the frat picture to want to fuck Grossman. Well, okay, that or maybe Kabeer Gbaja Biamilla—but that was strictly professional.

Anyway, I want Sexy Rexy to return because KGB plowing his ass makes for excellent Sunday morning porn. But apparently, Lovie Smith wants him back for other reasons. I’m floored, but here’s the text:

“You guys know how we feel about Rex Grossman,” Smith said. “We'd like for him to be a part of our program next year. As we talk about all our players that we've been with, there's been some highs and some lows. But we think Rex Grossman is a good football player and I choose to remember more of those highs. I still don't think he's peaked yet.”

I’d be rolling on the floor with laughter, except the motherfucker is 6-2 against the Packers. Of course, he admits that beating the Packers is his principal goal as a coach in that article. McCarthy’s principle goal is winning the Super Bowl. Nonetheless, it would have been nice to have beaten the Bears before losing the NFC Championship to the New York Football Giants.

Bubba Franks Released

Three-time Pro-Bowler Bubba Franks was released by the Green Bay Packers last week. To rip off the caption, Old Number 88 “played in 114 games for the Packers (94 starts), catching 256 passes for 2,300 yards. His 32 touchdown receptions are tied for 10th on the franchise's all-time list.” Damn. That only leaves Favre and Driver. That’s it. I’m gettin’ old. And I don’t look nearly as hot as Chris Chelios. I need to hit the gym harder this week.